The year was 1973 in the winter (January or February), I was standing in my back yard in Roanoke Virginia. As I was standing there in the dark Friday night about 9:00pm, something moving caught my attention in the sky. It was a flying object about the volume of three 50-foot boxcars or the average fast food restaurant. The shape was that of a sphere and the approximated dimensions of an M&M (without peanuts) and was a "brushed" silver finish. There were no wings nor rudder or any kind of protrusions along the crafts’ smooth lines.

The object was traveling from south to north (approximately) and I was curious, as this direction would lead it towards a close encounter with our airport so certainly they would see it on radar. I viewed the sphere from about a 45 degree angle. This object was flying at approximately 250 to 300 feet in altitude and was travelling about 100 miles an hour.

There was a rushing sound like the sound an automobile makes when it whizzes past very fast but no mechanical sounds were detected. In addition, there were no lights whatsoever, there were the red and yellow reflections bouncing off its lower surface from our local nearby Burger King.

I summarized that this craft was under its own power, under some kind of intelligent control, has a purpose and if made by mankind it is far beyond any propulsion type and aerodynamic configuration that is publicly known about. It was beyond any doubt an Unidentified Flying Object.

I am now 56 and then I was 17 soon to be 18, a aircraft model builder and being raised in the post WW2 environment was an avid young researcher in aircraft of all kinds so I was and still am “up-to –date” with most designs as well as with the experimental aircraft both commercial and military. I still build models and am a far better researcher with perhaps more interest in the unknown than is healthy.

So it has been some 39 years ago and I am truly as baffled by my sighting today as I was the night that it happened!

((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates that the date of the sighting is approximate. PD))